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Jim Sterling
James "Jim" Sterling (Not that one!) is a character in the television show Leverage. He is a major antagonist throughout the series - having the same training and perspective as Nathan Ford, the leader of the protagonist team. He is portrayed by , who also played Crowley from Supernatural. Biography The series premise is a former IYS insurance agent named Nathan Ford is recruited for a high-stakes theft with several notorious thieves. Though the thieves are experts in their fields, Nate is an expert at countering all of them due to his years of experience as an insurance agent, countering claims and exposing fraud. The man who hires Nate and the team turns on them, but fails to kill them and Nate and the thieves team up to take their revenge and make an obscene amount of money off them. Happy at their success, the thieves press Nate to keep working with them. Nate agrees to continue to help the thieves make the most of their skills with his expertise on the condition he assigns the targets - which due to his moral code, are only cruel, con-artists themselves, too rich and powerful to ever be taken down by the law. Sterling is the counter-point to Nate - another IYS insurance agent, with few-to-no scruples. Thus, Sterling remains a constant disruption to plans whenever he tracks Nathan and his team down. Sterling is familiar with all the same cons Nate is, which is effectively all of them. Since Sterling is still working for IYS at the start of the series, he is a dark-mirror of what Nate could have been had he not left the company due to it's more negligent practices. IYS Insurance Sterling is introduced in the episode "The Two-Horse Job". Sterling arrives to investigate an IYS insured horse - One Nate and his crew are trying to use to take-down a corrupt stable owner. The introduction shows Sterling's main function, both in IYS and the series - to save IYS money, not necessarily foil Nate, as Sterling tells Nate IYS suspects fraud but he knows Nathan has been consorting with con-artists so he is their to counter both the fraud and the con. Nathan warns his team of Sterling - that they worked at the same company, had the same sort of experiences. Nathan tells his team that they need to slow-down and stall Sterling to give the rest of their con on the stable owner room to take place. When hacker - Hardison and thief - Parker, remotely lock Sterling in his car in the parking-lot, Sterling simply calls the police, to tell them he saw a suspicious car with guns, giving the description of the van Hardison and Parker are in. The speed at which Sterling improvises this plan, paired with his forethought to use an American accent (rather than his natural British one) and his demonstration he knew where the two were even from the back of their van in a crowded lot, demonstrates to Hardison and Parker, (as well as the audience), just what Nate had been talking about. As of his phone-call forcing Hardison and Parker to leave Parker dubs Sterling "Evil Nate". Though ultimately Sterling uses Nate's con to expose the owner as the type willing to commit fraud and brings down a massive-lawsuit on him, he let's Nathan know that he could have at any point exposed Nate's con, however Nathan point's out doing so would completely subvert IYS's lawsuit. The two part with Nathan giving Sterling just enough room to save the company money while giving them a chance to re-coup much of it from their former customer, but keep him and his team out of legal re-precautions for helping to set it up. This first episode will mirror Sterling's future appearances in the series and what it means for the team. He is shown to be ruthless, intelligent, con-savvy, out to bust Nate, but above all else, self-servingly practical. Category:TV Show Villains Category:Live Action Villains Category:Nemesis Category:Villains by Proxy Category:Con Artists Category:Greedy Category:Honorable Category:Stalkers Category:On & Off Category:Sophisticated Category:Extremists Category:Male Category:Lawful Neutral